In Charleston, SC, for two nights

Ben Sawyer Bridge

The alarms went off early this morning and we pulled away from the dock at 6:15 a.m. to try to beat the rain. It appeared we would have a very rainy day, so we donned rain gear. We motored through Winyah Bay, moving at 9 knots/10 mph with the current and tide in our favor. That's a record speed for us.

At 7:30 a.m., it started raining, but by 8 a.m. it stopped. The current was against us now, so our speed  wascut down. We entered Four-Mile Creek Canal and favored the green due to shoaling.

At 9:10 a.m. we saw a dolphin dive under our boat! We took a look at satellite weather and saw a huge storm going across five states and were thankful that it was west of us!

We watched for shoaling at several mile markers thanks to updates from Skipper Bob online. At this point, we were averaging 7 mph.

At about 1 p.m., we saw 50-60 pelicans on a bank. We made it through the Ben Sawyer Bridge, which is being shut down for 10 days beginning Nov. 30. We were pushing to get past the bridge because the original date of closure was Nov. 13 (our son, Ryan's, 25th birthday) and we would have had to go outside to the ocean. Whew!

While entering Charleston Harbor, we saw a large school of dolphins. The weather update showed the rain was across seven states now, but was still miss us, thank God!

At 3:30 p.m., we pulled into Charleston City Marina. It's huge and a long walk to everything. I did a load of laundry before dinner and another after. Patti cooked the shrimp we bought off the boat in Georgetown yesterday with spaghetti, a salad and peaches with cool whip for dessert. It was delicious!

(At left, Bum's Rest coming into Charleston Harbor. We're on dock E and they're on dock F.

Tomorrow we'll don our raingear and take the shuttle into town and maybe pick up some groceries.